Inglis Easter Not Good for Everyone

In the aftermath of the surprise success of the Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale last week it’s worth revisiting the statistics with a more analytical eye as the reality is one in three yearlings were not sold and for their owners some tough decisions will need to be taken.

In the week since the sale concluded several sales on passed in horses have led to a rise in the overall clearance to 66% with 228 horses now sold from the 345 that were offered.

Logistics played a pivotal part in the success or otherwise of some vendors with those based in more remote locations struggling to have their yearlings as well inspected physically as others located more centrally.

Quality video, good images and social media played a massive part in promoting these yearlings, more so than in any other year reinforcing their merits to buyers, who may have only had time to see them once in the flesh.

Vendors that were on top of that early obviously had a head start, however even if you had done everything you could to try and get a decent outcome, some still struggled and the real reason for that was out of everyone’s hands.

Pandemic is not a word I ever really understood.

Sure I knew the term and was aware it was to do with widespread illness, but my definition of it in my head can only be likened to concluding a tsunami is a big wave, nothing to be overly concerned about and not anything likely to change my way of life.

Obviously, I had no idea and neither did 90% of the population.

Now we know… pandemic is something that affects every person in the world, no matter what your standing in life, and some of those people are yearling buyers or racehorse owners and as a result there were just not enough buyers to go around at Inglis Easter.

Look at the Inglis Easter buyers list this year, it’s as interesting for who is not on it as it is for who is.

Here is last year’s if you want to make the comparison.

Some large enterprises elected not to buy at all and that takes a lot of competition out of the marketplace, so prices drop and then it’s the vendor’s choice if they want to sell and meet the new look market or wait for better times.

If there was one really interesting thing it was the strength of Hong Kong based buyers given that five months ago Hong Kong was on the nightly news going through the worst civil unrest in it’s history.

The escalating violence in the streets every day and night suggested implosion was imminent with the very real prospect China was going to unleash some sort of retribution that would drastically change the way Hong Kong residents lived their lives.

Pandemic starts, civil unrest stops, racing continues in Hong Kong and hey presto, the Hong Kong Jockey Club purchase nine horses for $5million and change which is their biggest ever spend at this sale.

This pandemic has changed a lot of things and will continue to change a lot more, so we all need to be awake to opportunities and keep our eye on the future and not the past.

For any vendor feeling deflated, it’s worth sparing a thought for Inglis, who did an absolutely amazing job to keep the show on the road and create a world first elite thoroughbred virtual auction that exceeded all expectation.

Inglis Easter has had an aggregate in excess of $100million in every year since 2017 and this year dropped from $122million (2019) back to $70million…now that’s got to hurt.

Click here to see the full list of passed in horses still available on the Inglis website.